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Monday, May 10, 2010

Truth, Lawyers, and Elena Kagan

Lawyers make a living hiding the truth behind words.

If you don’t believe me, try reading your lease, your auto or title insurance policy, the disclaimer on any web site, your Judgment of Divorce, or the license agreement the comes with any piece of computer software. Better yet, try digesting some of the Internal Revenue Code, or your state’s laws on beginning a business, or go the local library and see if you are in compliance with zoning laws. The brave can go to the web site of the Supreme Court of the United States and start reading published opinions.

I once heard a distinguished and qualified person say, “There is only one Law. It is always followed, always obeyed. That is the Law of Supply and Demand. The rest, my friends, is Politics.”

Lawyers go about their business of hiding the truth for those who have the ability to pay them, after all, it is the business of hiding the truth, and all they have to sell is their time. The pockets of wealth and power in this country are much slicker at hiding their truths behind words because they have purchased that privilege.

But if you are wondering how Rachel Uchitel settled her “legal claim” against Tiger Woods, how another mistress of actor David Boreanaz can demand money to keep quiet because she has a “legal claim” against him, and how that squares with Robert Joel Halderman formerly of CBS going to jail for “extortion” of David Letterman, look no further than the difference between what Halderman paid his lawyer (he didn’t have one) to put forth his extortion demand, and what the jilted mistresses are paying their lawyer to submit their extortion demands.

If you are wondering how simply looking Hispanic in Arizona can get you stopped, interrogated, and arrested if you are not carrying your papers; but if you wear a business suit on Wall Street you are free to sell with impunity billion dollar investments to customers your buddy picked out because he wanted to bet they would fail, look no further than the difference they paid their lawyers.

If you believe Elena Kagan’s previously espoused views on Constitutional Theory, Judicial Activism, Abortion, the Death Penalty, Warrantless Wiretaps, Same-Sex Marriage, and the Second Amendment really provide reliable insight as to how she might vote in any given Supreme Court case before her, I would respectfully submit that you reconsider the previous six paragraphs.